Coming Out and Feeling Lost

I haven’t written much about being trans, really. Partly because it feels so personal in a way that blindness does not, so I’m not really sure what I want people to know and what I want to keep to myself. But also because coming out has inherently involved other people. Each time I come out, and it is something I must do over and over again, it is another person’s reaction that changes how I experience it.

Will they celebrate this step? Will they be very quiet and thoughtful? Will they act like it’s the most normal thing in the world? Will they be angry? Hurt? Resentful that I didn’t tell them sooner? It feels like a huge risk and it’s so, so exhausting.

It’s strange, really. I am very public about being transgender because I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. I already had this blog and spoke very publicly about disability rights. I could either stop it all, hiding from the world, or come out in a very public way. Neither is ideal.

But even being so open, I still have to come out to people. Whether that’s Student Finance, or the bank, I’m updating my details with so many organisations, and it’s pretty obvious why I’m doing it.

But that’s not really what I want to talk about either. I started writing this because I was thinking about my mum, and how she died two months after I came out. I’ve spent longer out without her than I did with her. And it makes me sad. That she won’t get to see the person I’m becoming and the changes that are happening in my life. That we only had a few brief conversations because she was too ill and so very tired, and we didn’t get to say half the things we wanted to.

So maybe this is about grief as much as it is about coming out. I think they are linked in a strange way. More linked for me, because I’ve experienced the loss of a parent. But linked for us all. Because we lose people when we come out. Friends who no longer want us in their lives, or family members, or people we haven’t even met but would have become friends with, people who wouldn’t want to know the person we openly live as now.

And that grief is awful. It’s awful for me because I know my mum loved me and supported me. She wanted to make sure that I was happy and safe. During the first month after I came out, when she was still well enough, she would call me to tell me about people in our family who she’d found out were gay after she’d updated family members about me. Or friends of hers who had LGBT family members. Or people who live on our street who had been happy for me. These were the kinds of things we shared, the little details of people’s lives, our interactions with them. The connections we all have. She was that kind of person. And I miss that.

But I also miss the deeper conversations we didn’t get to have, or that were left unfinished. Conversations about my gender and sexuality that I don’t really want to have with anyone else. The truths I felt comfortable telling her, because she wouldn’t love me any less for knowing them. I grieve as much the moments we never got to have as I do the things we had and that are now gone.

There are other people. Friends who have distanced themselves from me or become openly hostile. I miss them, even if I don’t really want people in my life who don’t accept me. I miss the days when it was easier, when I could hide inside myself and be the person they wanted me to be. They weren’t all bad days. There was so much good. Laughter and inside jokes and conversations late at night. That’s the difficulty, I think. People aren’t entirely good or bad when it comes down to it, at least not most of us. Someone can turn out to be intolerant, but it doesn’t change the fact that once upon a time they were your friend and that their friendship meant a lot to you.

It’s just so hard. Saying that either feels completely inadequate, or like I’m complaining when I shouldn’t. Because aren’t I lucky to be safe and to have many people around me who love and support me? So many LGBTQ people don’t have that, and yet I’m here feeling empty and lost in spite of it all.

I feel so much uncertainty about the future. I took this step of coming out and it’s set so many things in motion. My body is going to change. People are actually going to see me as somebody else, even though many of them will recognise that when it comes down to it I’m still the same person. I’m going to apply for jobs and maybe they’ll be even less likely to give me a job than they would before. Will anyone want to date me?

I don’t regret coming out for a second. But you can be glad you did something and also really sad about the impact it has had on your relationships, and terrified about the future. I want to know that it’s going to be ok. That I’m going to be ok. I want to know that one day I’ll be able to think about my mum without feeling like I’m being torn apart. I want to be able to think of the friends I’ve lost and know that it’s ok, that I survived it and that it was not my fault. I want to know that I’m still a whole human being, that people really do view me as one. I want to know that one day I will open up social media and there won’t be hateful post after hateful post about how disgusting trans people are. I want to know that I’ll get ready in the morning and I will feel comfortable in my skin, that my body actually reflects who I am.

I know that these things will happen, at least some of them. I can’t control the hatred other people have, but I do know that some day, I will feel ok with who I am. But now I am stuck in a moment of sadness and loss. Maybe I just need to push through it, to keep clawing my way through like I always do.

This post has been a mess. I don’t know that there was much of a point to it, other than I’m sad right now. But I’ve always found writing helpful and I try and be honest about how I feel, even when those feelings aren’t the most palatable.